Nature Drawing – Coastal Redwood

Coastal Redwood Trunk, Mt. Tabor, Graphite on Paper, 5 x 8.25″ (12.7 x 30 cm), 2013

This week: nature drawing, Mt. Tabor, and garden love.

The more beautiful the weather gets the harder it is for me to stay indoors to paint. After another dark wet Portland winter I am happy to take a break and trade out painting for drawing in the sun and the fresh air.

Pictured above is a drawing of a Coastal Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) that I drew in my Moleskine sketchbook up at Portland’s Mt. Tabor park this past Sunday. These are the tallest trees on earth and can reach up to 379 feet (115.5 m)!

Out the window to the east you can see Mt. Tabor beckoning me to abandon my studio.

Facing westward from Mt. Tabor towards my studio. (It’s the house with the garden.)

My garden plot is coming along nicely. So far I have planted Roma tomatoes, aroma basil, grey lavender, chives, snap peas and was gifted some tenacious potatoes which were already growing in the bed. I’ve been enjoying digging in the dirt with my hands and nurturing this small piece of earth. There is something very meditative and calming about working out there, and I’m looking forward to making drawings of these plants as they grow!

Also, I recently ran across this old photograph of myself as a young child in my pop’s garden. At this age I was known for (and actually remember quite clearly) raiding the garden of any and all snap peas.

Aroma basil starts in the garden.

Snap pea thief: my three year old self in the garden squinting in the sun, circa 1980.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment!  <<<>>>

S K E T C H B O O K S – Part 2

<<< Note: Web address change! >>>  Pinksphinx.wordpress.com is now located at https://mikeschultzpaintings.wordpress.com/ and mikeschultzpaintings.com.  If you’ve got my process blog bookmarked please update it.  : )

Connie Converse Album Artwork Sketch, Brooklyn, NY, Sumi Ink on Paper, 2009

More sketchbooks from the past!

What I find strange about keeping journals made up of drawings is that I can clearly remember everything about the moment that I was making each picture: Where I was, who I was with, my life circumstances and state of being at the time. It’s odd considering that without them my memories can be pretty vague . . .

Perhaps the best part about looking through my old sketchbooks was recognizing and acknowledging who I was in the past and how much I have grown as a human being. (Of course– I’m not talking about a drastic change from recent years. I’m talking about what I found in my sketchbooks from a decade ago.)

Next week I’d like to share my sketchbooks from when I lived in Thailand in 2010-2011.  I’m excited about it as I found a lot to share.

Thanks for reading!  <<<>>>  Feel free to comment!

Drawing of Cedar Mountain, Cody, Wyoming, Ink on Postcard, 2007

Portrait of Jack, Kansas City, Sumi Ink on Paper, 1999

Drawing Antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, Graphite, 2012

Lynn’s Lion, Portland, OR, Pencil on Paper, 2013

Emily Writing a Letter in a Diner, Near Big Sur, CA, Sumi Ink on Paper, 1998

Tea Plantations and Hills of Mae Salong, Doi Mae Salong, Thailand, Graphite on Paper, 2011

Portrait of Julie, Russian River, CA, Sumi Ink on paper, 1999-2000

Pocket Subway Moleskine, NYC, Ink on Paper, 2009

Self Portrait Looking at a Memory of Myself in Brooklyn, Mae Sot, Thailand, Pencil, 2011

Memory Drawing, Burmese Refugee Family Collecting Plastic, Mae Sot, Thailand, Graphite on Paper, 2011

People Drawing on the Subway, NYC, Graphite on Paper, 2012

People Drawing at Washington Square Park, New York City, Pencil on Paper, 2008

The Elegant Dog (at the Immigrant Detention Center Near Our House), Graphite on Paper, Thai-Burma Border, 2011

Mike at MOMA, New York City, Graphite on Paper, 2006

Little Nova, Portland, OR, Pencil on Paper, 2012

In the Wilderness with Ghosts (Preliminary for Doc’s Painting), Portland, OR, 2005

Thanks for reading!  <<<>>>  Feel free to comment!

Preliminary Pencil Drawing – Exodus

Exodus (detail), Graphite on Paper, 10.5 x 12″ (26.5 x 30.5 cm), 2013

Ahhhh, we had one day of blissful sunny weather with blue skies and Spring air– followed by another usual overcast day with a sky that looks like a flat florescent light bulb. Damn you, Portland, Oregon. The winter here is the trade for living in such a beautiful and bike friendly city.  For anyone who needs a winter lift I recommend this: Brooklyn, NY PS22 children’s chorus singing Lisztomania by Phoenix.

This week I’d like to share a preliminary pencil drawing that I have been working on for a double painting called Exodus. Double painting meaning I plan on painting two works at once back and forth so I can try out different techniques and colors on each canvas.  This is a narrative theme, image, and character that I have been making variations of for years.

Exodus, Graphite on Paper, 10.5 x 12″ (26.5 x 30.5 cm), 2013

Above is the full drawing.  I used Photohsop along with my actual drawing to reassess the composition.  Photoshop is a great way to try out radically different things to get a sense of what will and will not work.  Pictured below, you can see me  re-designing the clouds before drawing them into the final composition.  This also led to me adding a strip of paper to the top of the image to give the figure more breathing room.

Using Photoshop and a Wacom drawing tablet to experiment with the composition.

Lately I have also been playing around with different chops (a traditional artist stamp/seal that signs a work).  Eventually I would love to carve one out of jade or soapstone. Below is the first draft of the chop on my recent work.  I liked it, but it was too visually distracting for this particular drawing and so I reduced it to just the hare.

Duck and hare chop pre-edit. Fun? Sure, but too busy for this one.

The final hare chop (sans duck and vines) used for the Exodus drawing.

Sun starved artist lays on floor to soak up vitamin D while drawing.

Local cat Scratch chilling in the window enjoying freak February Spring weather.

Thank you for reading!  Please feel welcome to comment.  <<<>>>

Drawing a Portrait of Arty

This week I wanted to share a drawing I made of my friend Arty. He’s a painter whose ceaseless need to draw is wholly infectious. (Read as- He’s really fun to be around because I love to draw too!)

Detail of Portrait of Arty.

Arty sat for me earlier this week after a bike ride down the river and entertained our house cat while I drew him. You can see some of his work here on his tumbler. I am getting really into making these dark and loose graphite drawings and then cleaning them up around the edges with sparse amounts of white gouache in the end. I made another of a friend today that I will post soon.

Thanks for reading!

Portrait of Arty, Graphite and Gouache on Paper, 11 x 14″, 2012

Detail of a blue and trustworthy tool… the Double E– the workhorse of pencils.